More restaurants grow own ingredients

A growing number of chefs and restaurateurs are adding farming to their resumes.

Denise Trowbridge, For The Columbus Dispatch

A growing number of chefs and restaurateurs are adding farming to their resumes.

Although chef's gardens aren't new - they initially were the province of a few higher-end eateries (the Worthington Inn, Dragnofly Neo-V and Black Creek Bistro, among them) - the practice has taken wider root in the industry.

The Columbus Food League - the restaurant group encompassing the Tip Top, Betty's, the Jury Room and Surly Girl Saloon - grows chives, rosemary, peppers, zucchini and beans at its headquarters near the University District, which supplies fresh produce to all the restaurants.

"Our customers are savvy consumers, and they expect us to stay on the leading edge of movements like local food and farm issues," said Amy Brennick, chief operating officer of the group.

The growth of restaurant gardens is fueled in part by changing diner tastes: "Hyperlocal" foods - those grown or produced by the restaurant - ranked No. 5 on the list of hottest trends in the restaurant industry this year, according to the National Restaurant Association.

Locally grown and sustainable foods have topped the list the past three years.

"Locally sourced food and a focus on sustainability is not just popular among certain segments of consumers anymore; it has become more mainstream," said Michael Ty, president of the National Culinary Foundation. "Diners (want) to know where their food comes from and are concerned with how their choices affect the world around us."

To chefs, the movement means greater freshness and the flavor-packed punch that just-picked, specially cultivated foods add to the menu.

Harvest Pizzeria in German Village grows tomatoes, peppers and greens on a 1-acre farm near Canal Winchester.

"A lot of our customers don't know we grow our own produce, but when they bite into an heirloom tomato that I grew and picked that morning, they're wowed," said Chris Crader, who with fiancee Bethany Lovell opened the restaurant in July.

"You can literally taste the freshness."

The pizzeria uses its vegetables in salads, and on pizzas such as the goat cheese with soppressata, caramelized onion, cherry tomato and garlic.

Home-grown ingredients make for fresher, more remarkable meals, said Magdiale Wolmark, owner and chef of Dragonfly Neo-V in Victorian Village.

He has a 600-square-foot garden in what used to be a parking lot behind the restaurant where he grows more than 30 heirloom vegetables, greens and fruit such as sour cherries and berries.

"We grow things you can't get from local farms, and it really informs the menu," he said.

The cherries, for example, are made into sour-cherry empanadas as well as sour-cherry pickles. Whole cherries are also coated in hot sauce, preserved, and served as garnish in drinks at the bar.

"The garden has an important influence over how we approach menu creation and design." Wolmark said, "We think of the garden not as an addition to the restaurant but integrated into it."

Chefs also recognize that better ingredients make better meals - and "if you're going to source quality ingredients," said Craig Hoover, co-owner of the Top Steak House, "it's hard to get much better than growing it yourself."

The East Side institution grows greens, corn and heirloom tomatoes on a 90-by-150-foot plot on the South Side. The produce is used in special seasonal side dishes such as grilled corn and tomato salad.

"It's not only trendy, but it makes sense," Hoover said. "In this day and age, so much comes already prepared, this helps the chefs get back to their roots."

Plus, he added, customers increasingly expect it.

"We want to show people we aren't just a stodgy old steakhouse, and this is one way to do that."

Restaurants also have a bottom-line motivation to grow some of their own foods, said Thomas Smith, chef at the Worthington Inn.

With double-digit price increases for ingredients such as meat, produce and dairy in the past few years, he said. "there is definitely financial incentive to

. . . try to become self-sufficient in at least a few things."

The Worthington Inn's gardens - across the street from the restaurant and on part of an acre in Blacklick - supply all of the restaurant's herbs and a substantial portion of vegetables such as tomatoes, peppers and beans.

In Downtown Columbus, Latitude 41 recently built 80 square feet of raised garden beds on the roof of the Columbus Renaissance Hotel, in which it is located. The hope is to grow enough herbs to fully supply the restaurant, with chives, oregano, dill, anise hyssop, basil and parsley as well as some vegetables among the plantings.

"Our hope is the garden will pay for itself," Chef David

Maclennan said. "Herbs are very expensive, but they grow rapidly; and we hope we'll be able to harvest as much as possible in the space because they are our best hope for saving money."

The shift - both in public interest in locally grown foods and in restaurant owners growing their own - is "in a way, getting back to the right way of doing things," said Wolmark of Dragonfly Neo-V.

"The proliferation of processed foods in the past few decades has really been a glitch. It's not healthy, and it's not good for the environment. Now, we're all getting back to a sense of normalcy."

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.